If someone is in the Domain Administrators group and therefore access to a SQL server, can they get into the actual SQL database or do they to get a separate SQL Login by the DBA who controls the SA account?
If the sql server is using Mixed Mode Authentication then I think the domain admins can log in to SQL Management Studio using Windows Authentication and have sa access. Disclaimer: I've been drinking.
Almost all msSQL databases run in mixed mode in windows and domain admin can certainly carve their way around any mssql lock down you put in place. depending on exactly what was done to lock the db, they might break stuff and will probably leave an obvious audit trail - but nothing made by Microsoft in a domain is ever really secure from your domain admin. Also, the sane option for any SQL lockdown is to create an AD group for dba rights and assign domain accounts to that group, and sa rights in SQL to that group and the domain admin can then just add them self to the applicable group and do whatever they want to the db environment.
Thanks guys... Trying to help an IT auditor figure something out. Apparently some clients contracted network admin may have been poking around in a financial system database when they shouldn't have been.
Windows 8 question: What the fuck is making this thing go slowly? Would switching to 7 be quicker on my laptop?
Are you genuinely expecting to get some sort of an answer with that? You won't, because you've provided absolutely no information about the problem or your environment. If you're going to put that little effort into setting the stage of your problem, expect just as much effort into the response.
Non-hulk rage edit: I have a laptop with 8 gb ram, 1tb hard drive and an AMD A4-5000 processor. Windows is running Chrome, Media Monkey, MS word and windows explorer and it simply can't do that simultaneously. I am running Classic Start 8 so I get my start button, Avira antivirus, but I didn't think those were eating up too much computing power. Is Windows 8 the problem? Or am I missing something?
Pop open your performance monitor and see what's going on. Anti-virus is notorious for consuming stupid amounts of resources and slowing stuff down. It could also be that your drive is slow... the longer it takes for a file to be read off of a drive, the longer stuff takes. If you put in a fast drive or an SSD, you'd be amazed at the speed increase. It's not just a little bit faster, it's mind-blowingly faster. Personally, I'd never buy a laptop without an SSD in it these days. You could also try this: http://www.computerworld.com/article/24 ... mance.html
Windows 8 is almost universally faster than Windows 7. Performance monitor will definitely help identify problems but sometimes virus scanners can cause weird performance issues that don't really show up there - I've seen plenty of instances where they are delaying the processing of data, but not really consuming a ton of resources. We just had an issue at work where some of the functions of our application were basically broken on a server - it looked performance related, but system idle was at something like 80%, no other unexpected processes consuming CPU... turned out they didn't put in our virus scanning exemptions and the virus scanner was causing massive delays, but without any noticeable symptoms like the virus scanning process using a lot of CPU or something. First thing to do is to try disabling your virus scanner, then rebooting to completely free up those memory resources, and seeing if your problem goes away. Also, Windows 8 comes with Windows Defender, a built-in virus scanner. Your scanner may have disabled that (it SHOULD have disabled that), but if it didn't, you've got two scanners fighting for the same resources. Like I said, disable Avira, and test. If that fixes it, uninstall it and turn Windows Defender back on.
For bonus points the MCTS answer is to create a dedicated login (mapped to their AD account) for the people you want to lock out to explicitly deny them privileges
My brain hurts - if they're a domain admin, that doesn't actually secure anything. I guess you could make it a bunch of work to wiggle around that shit if your domain admin is stupid - but domain admin rights mean they can just create a new fucking login account that's a mirror of one of the DBA accounts for group membership, or reset the password on one of the DBA accounts so that they have a working username and password with SA rights. You can catch your domain admin doing shit cause cleaning up the audit trail is a pain in the ass, but you can't lock a domain admin out of shit on a domain.
So my old PS3 died on my and I bought my brothers slim PS3. I thought switching the HD was supposed to be an super easy process, which physically it is, but it automatically needs to reformat it if you do which deletes my game saves, which I want to keep. I'd prefer to just transfer the data as the slims hard drive is bigger. I think it was just my video card that burnt out on my original as there was some weird Windows Media player-esque visualizations that happened during start up for a few days, then it was kind of a blank screen with a few random white pixels, then nothing. The system still seems to boot, light is still green, HD still makes noises like it's loading. Ive tried A/V cables and doing the HDMI power button trick that resets the handshake between the system and my tv. From what Ive read my best hope is getting it to power on for at least a few minutes to get my data backed up to Sony's servers, which is what yellow light of death people have to do or somehow getting a PSP to transfer the data. There is a data transfer utility as well but both systems have to be functioning and there is some authentication protection for game save data that I guess can be different game to game and there is no guarantee it will transfer. Im just hoping for suggestions, things to try or tinker with. Anyone have to transfer data by PSP before? Could I use one to get into my ps3?
Saved game data doesnt up that much space, all its doing is calling to specific points in the game files. I backed up my PS3 with an external hard drive via USB. You have to format the drive or partition for FAT32 (NTFS isnt going to work) and follow the on-screen commands after you plug it in. You should only need a few minutes anyway since saved games are in the 300-800 KB range, ive never seen one go 1 MB or more.
So, I have a Lenovo tablet and a PC both using Windows 8 (ugh). The microSD card for the tablet tends to lose files, for some reason. For example, if I load a folder on the card via the pc and put the card into the tablet, the folder shows up empty. Also, videos on the tablet from the card simply don't play, for some reason. It's a 64gb Samsung card and I think if it was a 32gb it would work fine. Any ideas on why this doesn't work? I'd like to be able to transfer files directly from the PC to the tablet through the USB. How can I do this? When I plug the tablet into the PC, neither device recognizes the other. How do I fix this? Finally, should I just drop back and buy another damned tablet? What I'm trying to do is watch video on the tablet while I'm on a treadmill at the gym, which has no wifi.
Well... you might have two different problems. Videos not playing might be a question of what format the videos are in and what kind of video player you're using on the desktop vs. the tablet. Or it might be the same problem, of course. Is the tablet Windows RT? That is, it's not a full blown Windows 8 tablet with a full desktop and normal applications? Everything has to be installed from the Windows Store? What did you format the card as? I don't know much about the USB connection for Windows RT tablets but you should start with stuff like going into Device Manager on your desktop and seeing if there are any yellow exclamation points when you have the tablet plugged in, or going into the tablet settings and seeing if there are USB options you can change.
Using VLC to play videos. I've never heard of it not having the right format. The card is formatted as default (exfat, I think?). It's full Windows 8, not RT. I got some stuff on there through Dropbox, but the video files are too large.
At work, we are trying to VNC into a Windows 7 box from an Mac. We have installed TigerVNC on the PC, which didn't seem to work, and then installed TightVNC, which also didn't work. Window's Firewall is set to allow the VNC connections. The VNC service created by the VNC software seems to be running. Am I missing something silly? Do we need install the same VNC software on the Mac, or can we just use the built in Mac software? I feel like this should be easy, and that I am missing something obvious.
The Mac needs to have "remote desktop sharing" enabled. Also try connecting into the raw port with telnet to be sure the Mac's built-in firewall is set properly. On first glance this seems to cover it pretty well: http://www.wikihow.com/Set-Up-VNC-on-Mac-OS-X
It turns out I forgot to check that remote desktop sharing was on on the PC. Like I said, I missed something silly. Bah.